Almost all industries currently have at least one compressed-air network for providing compressed air to all types of machines or devices.
Many industries furthermore employ air gases provided by distribution networks, reservoirs or on-site production plants.
As a general rule, the systems for producing and providing compressed air and air gas are separate and independent, and run by different operators.
In the particular field of metallurgy, it has been proposed, in particular in documents U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,538,534 and 5,244,489, in the name of the Applicant Company, to employ a common compression group for the provision of compressed air to metal processing devices, on the one hand, and to an air-gas separation unit, on the other hand.